How to Stop Codependency Thoughts And Behaviour

Codependency is often referred to as “relationship addiction.” It’s an emotional and behavioural condition that interferes with an individual’s ability to develop a healthy, mutually satisfying relationship. It can be frustrating and destructive, but there are things that you can do to learn how to stop being codependent. To start, you should:

• Look for signs of a healthy relationship

• Maintain healthy boundaries

• Care for yourself

• Get help from a mental health professional

The term codependency was first used to describe the partner of someone with an addiction—whose unhealthy choices enable or encourage the addiction to continue. But over the years, it’s been expanded to include individuals who maintain one-sided, emotionally destructive, or abusive relationships, and those relationships don’t necessarily have to be romantic.

Signs of Codependency

Codependent individuals have good intentions. They want to care for a family member who is struggling. But their efforts become compulsive and unhealthy. Some signs of codependency include:

• A desire to "be needed." Their attempts to rescue, save, and support their loved one agalloch another individual to become even more dependent on them. The act of giving often gives a codependent individual a sense of satisfaction as long as they gain recognition.

• They might feel trapped and grow resentful. Their choices often backfire, and they may feel helpless yet unable to break away from the relationship or change their interactions.

• The relationship tends to deteriorate over time. It's often riddled with anxiety, frustration, and pity, rather than love and comfort.

For some individuals, codependent relationships become commonplace. They seek out friendships or romantic relationships where they are encouraged to act like martyrs.

Consequently, they devote all their time to caring for others and completely lose sight of what's important to them.

Codependency can come in many forms. But the root of a codependent relationship is that the codependent individual loses sight of their own needs and wants to the detriment of themselves and the other individual.

Examples of Codependency

Here are some examples of what a codependent relationship might look like:

In parent-child relationships it can involve:

• Doing everything for an adult child who should be independent

• Getting a sense of meaning or purpose from financially supporting an adult child

• Never allow a child do to anything independently

• Dropping everything to care for a parent

• Neglecting other responsibilities and relationships to respond to parents' demands

• Never talking about problems in family relationships or behaviours

In romantic relationships it can involve:

• Investing a lot of energy and time into caring for a partner with an alcohol or substance abuse problem

• Making excuses or covering for the other person's bad behaviour

• Neglecting self-care, work, or other relationships to care for your partner

• Enabling a partner's destructive or unhealthy behaviour

• Not allowing your partner to take responsibility for their own lives

• Not allowing your partner to maintain their independence

Why It Happens

Codependency is learned by watching and imitating other family members who display this type of behaviour. It’s often passed down from one generation to the next. So a child who grew up watching a parent in a codependent relationship may repeat the pattern.

Codependency occurs in dysfunctional families where members often experience anger, pain, fear, or shame that is denied or ignored. Underlying issues that contribute to the dysfunction may involve:

• Addiction to drugs, alcohol, work, food, sex, gambling, relationships

• Abuse (physical, emotional, or sexual)

• Chronic physical illness or mental illness

Problems within the family are never confronted. Codependent individuals don’t bring up the fact that issues exist. Family members repress their emotions and disregard their own needs to care for the individual who is struggling.

All of the attention and energy goes toward the individual who is abusive, ill, or addicted. The codependent individual usually sacrifices all of their own needs to care for the family member who is struggling. They usually experience social, emotional, and physical consequences as they disregard their health, welfare, and safety.

Risk Factors and Characteristics

While anyone might find themselves in a codependent relationship, certain factors increase the risk. Researchers have identified several factors that are often linked with codependency:

• Lack of trust in self or others

• Fear of being alone or abandoned

• A need to control other people

• Chronic anger

• Frequent lying

• Poor communication skills

• Trouble making decisions

• Problems with intimacy

• Difficulty establishing boundaries

• Trouble adjusting to change

• An extreme need for approval and recognition

• A tendency to become hurt when others don’t recognize their efforts

• An inclination to do more than their share all the time

• A tendency to confuse love and pity

• An exaggerated sense of responsibility for the actions of others

Studies show codependency is common in adults who were raised by parents with substance abuse problems, who live in chronic stressful family environments, who have children with behaviour problems, and who care for the chronically ill. Women are more likely to be codependent than men.

Individuals in the helping professions are also more likely to be in codependent relationships. It’s estimated that one-third of nurses have moderate to severe levels of codependency. Nurses need to be sensitive to the needs of others and often need to set aside their feelings for the good of their patients. They may also find validation in their ability to care for others, and that need may spill over into their personal lives.

Identifying Codependent Relationships

While codependency isn’t something that shows up in a lab test or a brain scan, there are some questions that you can ask yourself to help spot codependent behaviour.

• Do you feel compelled to help other people?

• Do you try to control events and how other people should behave?

• Are you afraid to let other people be who they are and allow events to happen naturally?

• Do you feel ashamed of who you are?

• Do you try to control events and people through helplessness, guilt, coercion, threats, advice-giving, manipulation, or domination?

• Do you have a hard time asking others for help?

• Do you feel compelled or forced to help people solve their problems (i.e., offering advice)?

• Do you often hide what you are feeling?

• Do you avoid openly talking about problems?

• Do you push painful thoughts and feelings out of your awareness?

• Do you blame yourself and put yourself down?

If you answer yes to many of these questions, it may be a sign of codependent behaviour patterns in your relationships. Identifying these patterns is an important step in learning how to stop being codependent.

How to Stop Being Codependent

Some individuals can overcome codependency on their own. Learning about what it means to be codependent and the harm it causes can be enough for some individuals to change their behaviour. Some steps you can take to overcome codependency include:

• Look for signs of a healthy relationship. To break out of codependent patterns, you need to first understand what a healthy, loving relationship looks like. Signs of a healthy relationship include making time for each other, maintaining independence, being honest and open, showing affection, and having equality.

• Having healthy boundaries. People with good relationships are supportive of each other, but they also respect each other's boundaries. A boundary is a limit that establishes what you are willing and unwilling to accept in a relationship. Spend some time thinking about what is acceptable to you. Work on listening to the other person, but don't allow their problems to consume your life. Practice finding ways to decline requests that step over your boundaries. Set limits, then work on enforcing them.

• Take care of yourself. People who are in codependent relationships often have low self-esteem. In being codependent, you need to start by valuing yourself. Learn more about what makes you happy and the kind of lifeyou want to live. Spend time doing the things that you love to do. Work on overcoming negative self-talk and replace self-defeating thoughts with more positive, realistic ones. Also, be sure you are taking care of your health by getting the food, rest, and self-careyou need for your emotional well-being.

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy

Hypnotherapy is a powerful tool for change and can help us understand why we feel and behave the way we do and support us to develop new ways of thinking. Cognitive Hypnotherapy can be beneficial for clients who want to release negative or limiting beliefs identifying the triggers that started. Using one or more of a variety of techniques that are tailored to specific issues and best suited to help eliminate stress triggers. 

The integration of hypnotherapy is more effective than using NLP alone. The self-awareness that the integrative approach offers is a successful way to quickly eliminate negative thoughts, emotions and limiting beliefs allowing the client to generate a more positive future, improve self-image build self-esteem increase determination identify helpful thought patterns and set healthy boundaries in relationships take responsibility for self growth.